The Lodge School - Early History 1745 To 1880

Early History 1745 To 1880

The Lodge school, had its beginnings in a bequest made by Sir Christopher Codrington who had two estates on the island. The Codrington experiment was to baptise and instruct in Christian education which was greeted with much suspicion by other Barbadian slave owners in the 18th Century. Codrington’s managers were ordered to give his people time off for themselves (usually a Saturday), Sunday being reserved for Christian instruction through which they were to have the benefits of education and the consolations of Christian religion.

There is some dispute as to the exact date of the school's foundation. Building work is recorded as having commenced in 1714, but for a variety of reasons was not finished until 1743. The Barbados Pocket Book of 1838 however records that the Codrington Foundation School was founded in 1721. When the school opened its doors to twelve foundationers to "teach them gratis, the Sons of such Persons as shall be judged not to be in Sufficient Circumstances to bring them up in learning the learned languages" on 9th Sept 1745, chronographers recognise this date officially as its inception. Other pupils were fee paying and most were boarders. The Lodge School is therefore one of the oldest secondary educational establishments on Barbados.

The bequest, Codrington Foundation School, was established with the primary purpose of educating boys who could be subsequently trained in "the study and practice of divinity, physic and chirurgery" there and at other seminaries in the region. In History of Barbados its author Robert Hermann Schomburgk gives an early account of Codrington College on pages 111 to 123. The first Bishop of Barbados, William Hart Coleridge, contributed immensely to the development of education in Barbados. The promotion of education was high on his agenda and the number of schools increased from eight to eighty three during his episcopate. The number of children receiving education in these schools increased from five hundred (500) to seven thousand (7000).

The devastating hurricane of 1780 ruined many buildings on the island, including those of the school. The historian Poyer describes it "the havoc which met the eye contributed to subdue the firmest mind. The howling of the tempest; the noise of the descending torrents from clouds surcharged with rain; the incessant flashings of lightning; the roaring of the thunder; the continual crash of falling houses; the dismal groans of the wounded and the dying; the shrieks of despair; the lamentations of woe; and the screams of women and children calling for help on those whose ears were now closed to the voice of complaint, formed an accumulation of sorrow and of terror too great for human fortitude, to vast for human conception. Earlier in 1775, the school was closed as a result of financial difficulties with the Codrington estates and it was not until 1789 that it was able to open again, continuing in a precarious manner with a succession of Headmasters, such that by the middle of the last decade of the Eighteenth Century it was not flourishing.

The appointment of Rev M Nicholson in 1797 was to have a marked improvement of the scholastic achievements as the school also made consistent progress. Pupils were known to leave and go straight to University. Under his leadership Foundation Scholarships were first offered in 1819 to students to enable them to go up to further education. Notably it wasn't until 1879 that the Barbados Scholarship scheme was started.

Coleridge also reorganised Codrington Foundation School so that it became in 1827 a training establishment for clergy as had been intended by its founder, Christopher Codrington. The Grammar School was transferred to the Chaplain's Lodge on the upper estate (from which the school later took its name) in 1829 under the charge of the Rev. John Packer and finally settled where it is now located on Codrington’s Society Estate in the parish of St John. Measures were taken for the opening of the College "no longer as a mere Grammar school for boys, but as a strictly collegiate institution for the education of young men, especially with a view to Holy Orders" (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel report on Codrington College, 1847).

In 1846 the Barbados Legislature made its first state grant of £750 for education. The Rev. Richard Rawle was appointed as Principal of Codrington College and the training of elementary school teachers was undertaken. In 1850 the first Education Act was passed which also raised the grant to secondary schools to £3,000 per annum. By June of that year under the headship of Rev W. Webb the numbers at the school had grown to 39 boys and two years later this had increased to 63 pupils, 48 of whom were boarders. In 1878 the governing body of the Lodge School was properly constituted and in the following year, the Government took over the running of the school, meeting all the expenses of the institution and paying a small stipend to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPC).

In BB Ward's History of The Lodge School 1745-1900 he closes the chapter of The Fourth School with the comment "perhaps an unfortunate oversight that there is nothing in the school to perpetuate the names of Mark Nicholson (Headmaster 1797-1821) and Rev Rawle (Principal of Codrington College 1847-1864), two of three men (Codrington, of course, the other) to whom the school owes its very existence".